And if carbon emissions continue unchecked, such events will become routine, with more extremes common within 50 years, according to research published Monday.
"You would not have these extremes without global warming," James Hansen, NASA's top climate-change scientist and the main author of the paper, said in an interview.
Hansen was one of the first scientists to identify threats from climate change and to advocate for action to counter carbon-dioxide emissions. The paper by Hansen and two co-authors was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. It was written before the recent spate of record heat and drought across the nation, but Hansen said the weather fits the pattern identified in the paper.
This year, the January through June period was the warmest on record in the United States, with temperatures 4.5 degrees higher than the 20th century average.
Hansen wrote the paper on extreme weather with Makiko Sato, also of NASA and the Columbia University's Earth Institute, and Reto Ruedy of Arlington-based Trinnovim, which provides support for agencies such as NASA. Read the full report here.
Source: Oregon Live.
